Huggins, Charles B

Huggins, Charles B(renton)

(born Sept. 22, 1901, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Can.—died Jan. 12, 1997, Chicago, Ill., U.S.) Canadian-born U.S. surgeon and urologist. He studied at the University of Chicago and subsequently taught there for several decades. He found that using estrogen to block male hormones could slow the growth of prostate cancer. He also showed that removing the ovaries and adrenal glands, which produce estrogen, could reverse tumour growth in some breast cancers. Drugs are now used to block estrogen production in such cases. He shared a 1966 Nobel Prize with Peyton Rous (1879–1970).